The Evolution of Automotive Culture

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Evo has been doing a pretty interesting Car vs. Bike track battle series. The latest installment is particularly interesting because they put a KTM motocross bike up against some rally cars. Up first is a hardcore Safari rally gravel spec 240Z followed by a tarmac spec Mitsubishi Evolution. I won’t spoil the results, but it’s interesting to see how the driving styles are changed for running long travel suspension and gravel tires on tarmac. There’s also a jump on the course where the effects of vehicle weight on speed are hyper amplified.

Nissan just made waves with their latest announcement about their Zero Emissions On Demand Race Car (ZEOD RC) that will be racing in this year’s 24 hours of Le Mans from the Garage 56 Technical Exhibition spot. When the car was first announced, Nissan wanted to make it a pure electric car and we took a look at the energy storage and recovery technologies that would be necessary to make that a possibility. Later during Chapter 1 of the build, Nissan had made the decision to make the car a hybrid with undisclosed powertrain details. Here is Chapter 2 of the ZEOD RC build that talks about nothing but the engine that will power the car. The new plan is to have the car run 11-12 lap stints around the Circuit de la Sarthe with one of those laps being done on pure electric power.

The rest of the laps will be powered by a 1.5 liter, 3 cylinder engine which cranks out 400 horsepower and 280 foot-pounds of torque despite the short block weighing only 88 pounds. It seems that 2014 will be the year that many automakers and even some motorcycle companies start offering small displacement 3-cylinder engines. The engineers have come up with good solutions to balance the vibration of firing four strokes of combustion on three cylinders. More importantly, turbocharging, variable valve timing and direct injection have finally come far enough to get real world usable power out of these small engines.

One of my bucket list projects is to build a classic Japanese car with a naturally aspirated tuned inline-6. Engines like the Nissan RB’s and Toyota’s JZ series are popular for their ability to hold huge amounts of boost, but the balance of the engine format also lends itself to the buttery smooth high rpm operation need for NA power. One of the obvious foundation choices for my project would be the S30 Datsun 240Z. They are definitely becoming a pretty legendary in the Japanese classic car arena. This video by Petrolicious does an excellent job of explaining why:

Check out this on-board footage of the a tube-frame 1974 Mazda RX-3 GT-3 race car during the Walter Mitty historic festival at Road Atlanta. The car weighs 2030 pounds with the driver and is powered by a 12a with a bridgeport and 40mm carb. As you will see, the RX-3 is seriously quick.

GoPro just released their own take on Ken Block’s Gymkhana 6. It’s basically the extra footage from all the odd places they decided to stick one of their cameras including in the Fiesta’s engine bay, looking at Ken’s pedals and on the wrecking balls.